Babylonian War of the Diadochi

The Babylonian War grew from the wider Wars of the Diadochi as Seleucus attempted to recover and secure Babylon against Antigonus Monophthalmus. Control of the city mattered because Babylon was both a symbolic centre of Alexander’s empire and a strategic base for the eastern satrapies.

The conflict helped establish Seleucus as a major successor ruler and exposed the limits of Antigonus’s attempt to dominate the whole Macedonian inheritance. The war turned possession of Babylon into one of the key tests of power in the post-Alexander world.

Robert Fabbri’s Babylon and Forging Kingdoms draw directly on this struggle for the east. The context supports fiction about siege, satrapal politics, coalition warfare, Seleucus, Antigonus and the emergence of Hellenistic kingdoms from the wreckage of a single empire.